Blog

An MSP’s year has some very regular milestones. The Programme for Government every September; the process of negotiating the annual budget either side of Christmas, and the recess periods when MSPs finish their work in the chamber and in committees, but which offer us more time to get out and about visiting constituents and organisations in the areas we represent.

This week the Scottish Government is running a five-day "Climate Week", no doubt celebratory in tone, but there are three key areas where their claims of being a “world leader in climate change” are becoming absurd.

People in most political parties supporting the Leave campaign got involved in immigrant bashing. People in most political parties on the remain side talked about “controls on immigration”. We had vans being driven round our cities telling immigrants to “go home”.

What does a “domestic extremist” look like? Someone wearing a red baseball cap emblazoned with slogans claiming to make their country “great again”? A far-right thug who uses the threat of violence in an attempt to intimidate anyone who looks different from them? Or members of a community peacefully waving home-made placards, campaigning to protect themselves from pollution?

As Scotland’s annual Food and Drink Fortnight comes to a close this weekend, the past two weeks have left us with plenty of food for thought about how we produce, consume and market our food.

This year’s event has been themed around the future of Scotland’s food and drink industry, but for many we have been given a stark warning about what that future could look like if we fail to take animal welfare concerns seriously.

This week’s return to business for the Scottish Parliament was an opportunity to address the hopes of people in every community across the country. Making Scotland a fairer, progressive, more democratic country is something there’s broad agreement on but it’s an agenda that has needs a far bolder approach at Holyrood.

I’m reminded of the very blunt response given by a Swedish commentator when author and National columnist Lesley Riddoch explained the convoluted and remote way that local services are currently funded in Scotland: “Don’t you trust yourselves?”

“In Dundee traffic is building up on the North side of the Tay Road Bridge. In Glasgow the M8 Eastbound has slow traffic between junction 22 Plantation and 19 Anderston, and in Edinburgh there’s heavy traffic on the A90 Queensferry Road…”

My summer holiday this year began with one last work commitment – I had accepted an invitation to speak at the Féile an Phobail – the West Belfast Festival – about independence, Brexit, and the connections between the Irish and Scottish situations in this unprecedented context. It’s pretty unarguable that both countries’ interests are being trampled on by the UK Government’s reckless approach.

Forty years ago, the first fish farms appeared in Scotland’s west coast sea lochs. No planning consent was required and as they spread, local politicians and campaigners became aware of the unaccountable and remote body that is the Crown Estate Commissioners. Since 1961, they have been responsible for managing Scotland’s Crown Estate and as their tentacles spread, they began demanding rents and levies from harbours and moorings that had previously invested in coastal facilities not ever imagining that they needed to pay rent for the privilege.